Our fourth consecutive day of brilliant sunshine on the south island. Who'd have thought it? We didn't. We'd been led to believe that the south island would have worse weather and that's definitely not true so far. So why all this talk about glaciers then? Well, like the town of Fox Glacier (20 minutes down the road) is named after a nearby glacier, the town of Franz Josef is also named after a glacier. How the Fox Glacier got its name I don't know but the Franz Josef glacier was named after the Austrian-Hungarian emperor by the explorer who found it. Apparently its long, white, flowing appearance reminded the explorer of his emperor's beard. However, the explorer (Haast) had already named a glacier (and a river, a mountain, a creek, a gorge and a pass to name but a few things) after himself or he would surely have given it his own name. I wonder if the emperor knew that at the time that Haast was apparently knighted?

Enough history for now. It is possible to undertake a glacier walk on the Franz Josef glacier and that is exactly what we decided to do. Since it was such a nice day, we opted not to wear the waterproof clothes offered by the tour company and so apart from lots and lots of clothing layers, all we had with us were our bags, cameras and lunch. The tour company gave us a pair of crampons each and an axe. Yes, you read correctly. Someone gave Claire an axe. What were they thinking? :-) We were then dropped off a 40 minute walk from the foot of the glacier with our guide, Brian. About 250 years ago the glacier had originally reached the point at which the bus dropped us off but over the years it has receded although it is now growing again.

The walk to the foot of the glacier was easy enough but because the sun had not penetrated the valley we were in yet, we started the walk feeling very cold and finished it feeling just cold. As we were putting our crampons on and being told how to walk on the glacier, a kea landed nearby. Kea are wild parrots native to New Zealand. "Wild" is also quite appropriate to describe their behaviour too. They have been know to remove the rubber surrounding a car windscreen.

The ice axe we all had seemed a bit useless to me. Well, maybe more of an inconvenience really. We didn't really need them and I kept forgetting that I had it. More often than not I would try and steady myself with my hand resulting in a humourous stumbling incident because I had no grip. We had been near a glacier in Argentina before but actually walking on one is different. From a distance it may just seem like a huge white flow of snow or ice but up close there's a lot of cool stuff happenning. Every now and again there was a small hole where a stone used to be but the sun has heated the stone and it's melted its way through the glacier to the bottom, maybe 100ft or more below. There were huge cracks in the ice where the flow had broken up as it came over the mountain lip. The odd few ice holes that we climbed through including one very small one that Claire slid through. It was all exhausting work but thoroughly enjoyable. By the time the sun was setting, I was well and truly worn out. I'd recommend doing this to anyone coming to New Zealand.

Now, this is where the nice warm spa pool comes in. Back at our hostel, we went straight for the spa pool to soothe our aching bodies. Not only was the walking hard work, we ended up with a few cuts and bruises between us.

The following day, we started heading south. A sign just outside Franz Josef informed us that the road to Haast (and a town) was closed although by the time we had finished in and around Fox Glacier it was open again. In the town of Fox, there are more opportunities to go glacier walking although obviously on the Fox glacier. Instead of doing those though, we turned off and headed for Lake Matheson, apparently one of the the most photographed parts of New Zealand. We could have walked all the way round the lake if it had not been as cold as it was, and slightly cloudy, and we settled for a short walk to take some photos. The cloud, unfortunately, made it hard to distinguish between the sky and the tips of the mountains. A blue sky at that point would have been great.

We stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Fox Glacier for lunch. I think the Franz Josef glacier looks bigger but it was still a great spot. For the Lord of the Rings fans among you, the Franz Josef glacier and the surrounding mountains were used to depict the lighting of the beacons in Return of the King.